P&K Stuff Maybe?

Which can be an extremely effective device within narration!

They can work very well for characters whose names the narrator doesn't know yet (especially to differentiate between two or more). How specific the epithet is can signal to the reader how important the character is going to be later on, and whether they should dedicate bandwidth to remembering them for later ("the bearded man" is much less likely to show up again than "the man with the angel tattoo")

They can indicate when characters stop being as an individual and instead embody their Role, like a detective choosing to think of their lover simply as The Thief when arresting them, or a royal character being referred to as The Queen when she's acting on behalf of the state

They can reveal the narrator's biases by repeatedly drawing attention to a particular quality that singles them out in the narrator's mind

“All was confusion in the Oblonskys’ house. The wife had found out that the husband was having an affair with their former French governess, and had announced to the husband that she could not live in the same house with him. This situation had continued for three days now, and was painfully felt by the couple themselves, as well as by all the members of the family and household. They felt that there was no sense in their living together and that people who meet accidentally at any inn have more connection with each other than they, the members of the family and household of the Oblonskys. The wife would not leave her rooms, the husband was away for the third day. The children were running all over the house as if lost; the English governess quarreled with the housekeeper and wrote a note to a friend, asking her to find her a new place; the cook had already left the premises the day before, at dinner-time; the kitchen-maid and coachman had given notice.”

Bit of a long paragraph, that. It’s the introduction not only to the family, but to the entire book. It’s what follows the opening line: “All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” So that long paragraph above serves to elaborate on that claim. We're not getting any emotional depth from these characters yet—just a brief summary of the roles they play to one another. Tolstoy’s emphasizing two things: the fact that this family serves as an illustrative example of his broader claim, and the fact that they’re estranged from one another. So it makes perfect sense to refer to them in the detached way he does.

From that paragraph on, though, Tolstoy narrows in on the family and their friends and acquaintances. Suddenly we’re given an intimate view of their lives and thoughts. And so Tolstoy uses names and pronouns, except where he wants to highlight the relationship one character has with another. Even in our first paragraph, which is cluttered with “the [insert role]” references, you never see Stepan Arkadyevich referred to as “the prince” or “the decadent”. Those are important (and arguably relevant) qualities of his character, but since the point of this particular paragraph is to illustrate a claim about familial relations, what’s most relevant is his status within his household as “the husband”. Anything else would distract from the topic at hand.

Now let’s look at a situation that more closely resembles what I tend to see in fanfiction. Something more intimate and conversational. We’ll take Konstantin Levin’s first meeting with his elder brother, Nikolai.

Up to this point, the former’s generally been referred to by his last name, Levin. But now that he’s with his brother, that won’t work. There are two Levins in the room now. Tolstoy has the opportunity to distinguish them from one another using an attribute. Nikolai’s described as unusually tall and thin, “with big, frightened eyes”. Any one of those qualities would work. The problem is, referring to him by an attribute or behavior would call attention to it at the cost of a familiar tone. So the question is, is that a worthwhile exchange to Tolstoy?

At times, yes. “His hair had become thinner, the same straight moustache hung over his lips, the same eyes gazed strangely and naively at the man coming in. ‘Ah, Kostya!’ he said suddenly, recognizing his brother, and his eyes lit up with joy. But in the same second he glanced at the young man and made the convulsive movement with his head and neck that Konstantin knew so well, as if his tie were too tight on him…”

It’s not for variety’s sake that Tolstoy uses epithets here. By referring to Konstantin the same way you might refer to a stranger, Tolstoy’s calling attention to Nikolai’s haziness brought on by illness and drunkenness. He doesn’t know his own brother. But then he recognizes him, and the moment he does, Konstantin ceases to be “the man coming in” and becomes “his brother”. (Next we see a reference to “the young man”, a currently unnamed character who appears earlier on the page. He’s described that way because our primary POV character, Konstantin, doesn’t know who he is yet.)

Generally, though, Tolstoy goes about distinguishing the Levin brothers from one another the same way I do: calling them by their first names. Which is how most people speak and think, right? When we’re telling stories about events we’ve personally experienced, we don’t replace the names of known characters with random epithets. Imagine if I called my dad “the older man” or “the data scientist”. They’re both technically accurate, but it’d be really weird.

There’s an example of first-person POV right there. And if you’re working in third-person limited, you want to treat it more or less like first-person, since you’re still assuming the perspective of a particular character or group of characters.

Third-person omniscient’s a bit different, but I think the principle still applies. If the narrator knows the characters’ names, there’s no reason for him to scatter the text with epithets. Say I’m telling a story about Czar Nicholas II to a friend. I’m not in this man’s head, but I do know everything that’s relevant to his story. I might call him “the Czar” as shorthand. (Depending on the story I’m telling, the fact that he’s the Czar might either be relevant or comically irrelevant.) But I’m not going to start calling him “the blue-eyed man” or “the balding man”. That’d be weird and confusing.

A lot of fanfics I’ve seen aren’t written in the proper omniscient style anyway; they’re just head-hopping. Which can be done well, I think. But it requires care and caution.

No writing is wasted.

Thank you blessed @owlsandwich for the tag game from a couple of days ago which sponsored this morning's writing time (I wanted to skip). I've spent so long just revising and revising a first draft, it's been a while since I had to write basically from scratch and I forgot that's its own different skill set (the imagination muscles are flabby).

Tagging: @mysticstarlightduck @by-allison-kai @danafaithwriting @tildeathiwillwrite @smzeszikorova @virgolioness @composterhedgehog

Hello, friends, and welcome to our semi-official P&K content blog. I'm @smzeszikorova, and I'm working with @adrielcastlyre on a series of four books, currently titled Pemoki & Kenacia, though that name may be subject to change. We've spent about ten years world-building and character-building. Not an ideal timeline, but I regret nothing. The joy's in the process.

We've laid out the foundations for all four of our books—made the transition from pantsers to planners. The outline's all there, and though there's a few important details to work out, we know what direction we're taking. Phase one's complete. Once I've submitted my thesis (UPDATE: SUCCESS) , we'll be set to hammer out our drafts.

For newcomers:

Pemoki & Kenacia's a bit ambiguous, genre-wise. The closest thing to it's probably hard fantasy. As for our target audience, I'd go with "adult". our POV characters' age range is pretty broad, and their interests and concerns vary accordingly, but they're written with adult readers in mind. I'm cautious to reduce P&K to a string of TikTok tropes. That said, here are some things you can expect to find here:

Multiple protagonists. Our cast is large. We've got approximately 90 named characters in-universe whose appearances in the end product are more or less guaranteed. Granted, most of these aren't central to the plot. But our main cast is on the large side. Each book generally has one to two protagonists; they change from book to book.

Multiple POVs. And to ensure that each character's arc comes to a satisfying conclusion, I switch between points of view somewhat regularly. (My tendency's to head-hop. For college degree reasons, I read a lot of old-timey Russian literature in the vein of Anna Karenina, and it influences my style, but I know head-hopping's a bit of a controversial writing choice these days. Whether we'll try to shift toward a purely omniscient style is currently under debate. Regardless, expect to get to know a lot of characters.)

War and international conflict. Our story's very concerned with the personal struggles of our characters—familial conflict, romance, friendship, betrayal, etc.—but it all takes place within the broader backdrop of these warring countries we've invented. And the war takes center stage often.

Deep worldbuilding. This universe is large—well suited for such a large cast. Currently, it involves five multinational regions, eleven countries, and nineteen cities. With limited space to explore all these places, we highlight what's essential and let the rest inform the narrative in subtler ways.

More reality than fantasy. People who’ve had a look at our works in progress say that we’re pretty grounded in reality for a couple of fantasy writers. All our main characters are human. Magic is a genetically-inherited phenomenon with rules loosely based in science. And while none of our fantasy regions, ethnicities, or religions are meant to be read as directly analogous to any real-world ones, they do draw influence from the real world at times. I’m sure you’ll notice this in the Russian-based languages of the Sitrii Elariny, the English-based language of Kenacia, and the language of Qhiron, which draws from both but perhaps not quite so obviously. In our worldbuilding, we make a point to give our invented nations believable complexity, heterogeneity, and political and economic motivations. We’re not too big on the “This region is inhabited by the stouthearted, down-to-earth Welverpeople who universally prefer farming tools to swords, are warm and inviting to outsiders, practice simple domestic magic, and make for extremely loyal allies” vibe.

Conlang. Fairly self-explanatory. Usually I'll just say, "[Insert sentence here]," Character X said in Pemokese. But now and again, when I feel it enhances the narrative, I'll leave it in my invented language and let readers draw their conclusions about the meaning.

Problematic characters, dark topics, and complex, incomplete redemptions. It's very important to us that we approach our darker topics with caution and sensitivity, but we're not writing Aesop's fables. Don't expect comfortable, obvious answers to the ethical questions we pose. Folks looking for escapism or retributive justice narratives should probably look elsewhere.

Queerness; disability; ethnic, racial, and religious diversity. Our story isn't really about these elements, per se, but our characters come from a variety of backgrounds, both real and invented, and it does inform the story. (We're both white and culturally Christian, and in terms of our relationships with queerness and disability, we'd both make for lousy representation, so we're operating with the understanding that we're gonna need hella beta reading once all this is done.) And on a similar note . . .

We take some unusual liberties with our world. Fake religions (Dzulyan, Kvotyj, etc.) coexist with real ones. And though our languages and cultures are obviously influenced by the real world, they're all explicitly invented. We're not too concerned with making our universe consistent with real-world history, so while we do touch on issues related to queerness, ethnicity, etc., we don't go out of our way to align the experiences of our cast with those of people living within a certain real-world time period. When we decide what scientific knowledge and technology to include, our key is internal consistency. We'll guide you through the rules of this universe as needed, but if at any point you find yourself wondering what time period we're supposed to be in, just know that the answer is "none of the above".

Now, with all that said...

What are you likely to find on this blog?

Updates. If you want to know how P&K's coming along, here's where we'll ramble about the process.

Art or other related side projects.

Requests for beta readers, once we get to that stage.

This blog's a writeblr of sorts, but we won't discuss anything unrelated to P&K here. My coauthor's not very involved with social media in general, and I'm in and out of the writers' community on this site. So if you're here for tag games, community events, etc., @smzeszikorova's where you'll find all that. This blog's essentially a dumping ground for P&K materials. I can't imagine it'll be too effective as a hype builder, but once our books are released, everything we post here will be available for our readers to see. And on the off chance that our books get big (which I'm not counting on, but it'd be pretty cool), those of you who join in the fun now will have special clout. "We were here from the beginning." Do with that what you will.

We take asks! If you're interested in putting our characters in (non-erotic) situations, feel free to send in an art prompt.

As for the books themselves, I've tried to be sparing about plot reveals. (That'll be truer from here on out than it was on my other blog. Current mutuals, I swear I'm not kidding when I say all those art posts, quotes, and snippets I used to post are basically void. That's how much we've changed over the past few months. But the first book's premise remains the same:

As the threat of war looms on the horizon, Catherine Leures, an impoverished Kenacian woman living in the north of Pemoki, enlists in an effort to pull her family from the depths of financial ruin.

(I think I'll hold off on descriptions of the other books for now. They'd be pretty spoilery. But I'll post more thorough blurbs as I start getting these published. We do have titles for the second, third, and fourth books: Fledgling's Descent, Stirrings of a Silent War, and The Fallen Star of Thaeryvon.)

What do I mean when I say everything's changed, then?

I mean the process of filling plot holes, removing extraneous plotlines, and accounting for sensitivity in our characterization has resulted in a good number of our characters' personalities, relationships, and arcs being completely revamped. Lucky you! Aside from knowing the names, national and moral alignments, and general appearances of most of the first book's main cast, you'll be on about the same page as new readers if/when P&K gets published.

Before I go, a couple updates about P&K:

Since I started writing my thesis, my writing style has changed significantly. We've been making stylistic revisions to our original draft. Thankfully for our future editors, our first draft's gotten a lot more concise.

All the canon events are essentially set. The "outline" I did for my thesis is basically one long synopsis. All that's left for our first draft is to fill everything out with dialogue and detail. (Easier said than done, but I'm excited anyway.)

My coauthor and I have been playing with the idea of a character narrator: someone with a personal investment in the story. We're not sure yet, but it's a fun experiment.

Tumblr Update: @adrielcastlyre and I recently took a bit of a break from P&K posting, but we’ve returned, and we’re back at work. Folks who are still waiting on art projects or ask responses from @smzeszikorova, I’m still there, and I haven’t forgotten about any of you. (Apologies for the delay. I’d like to make the excuse that I’ve been busy with my last semester of school, but as you can see, I haven’t been nearly busy enough to warrant this long of a break. This is why I don’t do paid commissions.)

If you’re looking for writeblr community engagement and tag games, that’s where you’ll find them. For now, this blog’s for updates, mainly. We’ll probably also post P&K art every now and again. If I find the time this week, I’ll put up a more thorough introductory post. Something friendlier for newcomers.

Writing update: I’ve been hard at work on my undergrad thesis, which is essentially a collection of letters exchanged between characters in-universe, along with a complete outline of all four books. The letters are in progress; the outline is complete. We’ve reviewed everything we have, and the narrative’s more coherent than ever. It’s also changed a lot, to the degree that a lot of my old art posts read like mediocre P&K fanfiction. Such is the nature of this eternal revision process, I suppose.